Everything Old Is New Again...Again

Greg Sargent inThe Washington Post sent up a flare yesterday that signaled that an old fight is soon going to be raging anew.

Dem Senator Sherrod Brown, a member of the Finance Committee, tells me that GOP Senators have requested hearings into Social Security Disability Insurance this summer. Dems expect Republicans to attack the program as wasteful and fraudulent, in part because conservative media have already done so, and in part because at least one GOP proposal in recent days took aim at the program...Brown said he expects Republicans to renew attacks on disability insurance (as opposed to the retirement security portion) to divide supporters of Social Security and renew the push for structural changes to the program, and said Dems could use that to draw an effective contrast. SSDI's trust fund is set to be depleted soon, but that could be solved by a reallocation fix that's been done before, rather than a deep benefits cut, which Republicans may press for.

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Brown shrewdly notes that this is a backdoor attempt to weaken Democratic support for Social Security generally by dividing supporters of the retirement insurance from supporters of disability insurance. This is a brawl over a program that makes the lives of the families of poor and sick children a little easier. Every decade or so, conservatives shamelessly go after this program with wild-assed -- and largely unsubstantiated -- tales of waste, fraud, and abuse, the Three Horsemen of Knuckling The Poors. This enables me (again) to refer folks back to the sad and infuriating story of little Marcus Stephens from New Albany, Mississippi, who was a victim of the last time there was a misbegotten frenzy over the Social Security disability program. (I hope Sargent will note the large role in that tale by his newspaper, and by Bob Woodward, the Easter Island head that looms over the WaPo newsroom.) Let Marcus's story be a primer for you about what Sargent correctly says is coming down the track. Horsepucky is going to fly thick and fast over this one, and there will be hundreds of Marcus Stephenses about whom you will not read a thing.